Day: July 23, 2006

Sao Paulo’s Cansei De Ser Sexy (aka CSS) have had a flogging on various blogs over the last few months, but I make no apologies for throwing my own two cents into the ring. Truth is, I’m in love with this band – their debut Sub-Pop album is one of the most refreshing and liberating releases this year. Devoid of pretension and rammed with attitude, the self-titled ‘Cansei De Ser Sexy’ is a pop album like no other.

Cansei De Ser Sexy (“tired of being sexy”) epitomise smart party music – their heads are just as likely to be found inside Pitchfork as The National Enquirer. They seem to be both simultaneously repulsed by and deeply attracted to trash celebrity, all the while thrashing out tunes that recall the communal party spirit of Blondie, Chicks On Speed, The Sugarcubes, LCD Soundsystem, Peaches – they’re all in there somewhere.

Backstory: Brazil’s Trama Virtual is similar to Myspace, with 35,000 bands vying for your download attention. Five girls, a vocalist named Lovefoxxx, punk pop songs, short shorts, lyrics about J-Lo and Paris Hilton – is it any wonder CSS left 34,999 other bands in their wake? Fotologs apparently played a large part in this story; each member of the band has their own individual photo blog, and there’s a sixth communal photo blog for the band. Then there’s the Myspace pages, the band blog, the web site, the label site…

I had the good fortune to interview bassist Ira Trevison this week, who told me that they were not a Brazilian band, and not a Sao Paulo band – rather the internet is their geographic terrain, and without such citizenship, their career would have gone nowhere; the resultant signing to the legendary Sub-Pop would have been nothing but a wet dream.

CSS’ self-titled album is out now on Sub-Pop, the ‘Let’s Make Love And Listen Death From Above’ single features remixes from Spank Rock and another from the ubiquitous Diplo. Also worth a hunt is a 2005 Brazilian release which features their cover of Madonna‘s ‘Hollywood’, plus their own original bastard pop tracks featuring heads-to-heads such as Blondie vs The Undertones, Missy versus Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the hilarious track ‘i Want to be your J-Lo’.